CS:5980:001 Topics in Computer Science III: Computing Research Ethics
Spring 2018

Instructors:
Sriram V. Pemmaraju
101G MLH, sriram-pemmaraju@uiowa.edu, 319-353-2956
Office Hours: 1:30-2:00 M, 10:30-11:30 W, 2:00-3:00 F (and by appointment)
Alberto M. Segre
14D MLH, alberto-segre@uiowa.edu, 319-335-1713
Office Hours: by appointment

Course website: http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~sriram/5980/spring18/
Department website: http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/
Course Syllabus: Syllabus

Weekly Readings and Assignments

Additional Reading:

• Facebook’s Emotional Manipulation Study Is Just the Latest Effort to Prod Users MIT Technology Review, July 2014.
• Retraction Watch: Rapid mood swing: PNAS issues Expression of Concern for controversial Facebook study.
• U Iowa IRBs.
• Dept of Health and Human Services: Federal Common Rule.
• Recent updates to the Federal Common Rule.

Assignment: Email your Online Training certificates for the three courses mentioned in the syllabus.

Week 2: 1/22-1/26 The Ethics of Authorship, Peer Reviewing, and Collaborative Research: Part I
Main Reading: ``The Ethics of Authorship: Feature Overview--How Should Authorship Be Decided?'' Katie Cottingham, March 2001. http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2001/03/ethics-authorship-feature-overview-how-should-authorship-be-decided. Make sure you read the essays by the 4 "authorship experts" in response to the hypothetical authorship dilemma prsented in the article.

Additional Reading:

• University of Iowa Authorship Policy http://opsmanual.uiowa.edu/community-policies/research/university-iowa-authorship-policy.
  
• The double helix and the "wronged heroine" http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v421/n6921/full/nature01399.html.
  

Week 3: 1/29-2/2 The Ethics of Authorship, Peer Reviewing, and Collaborative Research: Part II
Main Reading:

• "Ethics of Peer Review: A Guide for Manuscript Reviewers," Sara Rockwell, http://ori.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/prethics.pdf.
  
• Nature's peer-review debate: http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/debate/index.html There is a whole lot to read here so here are three suggestions: (i) "How can we get the best out of peer review? A recipe for good peer review" by Trish Groves, (ii) "What is it for? Analysing the purpose of peer review" by Elizabeth Wager, and (iii) "Increasing accountability: What authors, editors and reviewers should do to improve peer review" by Kirby Lee and Lisa Bero.
  
• Single versus Double Blind Reviewing at WSDM 2017, by Andrew Tomkins, Min Zhang, and William D. Heavlin.

Additional Reading:

• "Ethics of Peer Review: A Guide for Manuscript Reviewers. Case studies -- Guide for the Discussion Leader," Sara Rockwell, http://ori.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/guide.pdf.
• "Reviews of Journal Manuscripts: Nasty, Petty, Arrogant," Chronicle of Higher Education, 2000. http://chronicle.com/article/Reviews-of-Journal/13740.

Week 4: 2/5-2/9 Rights and Responsibilities of Graduate Students as Advisees and Faculty as Advisors including Conflicts of Interest/Commitment
Main Reading:

• "How to be a Good Graduate Student," Marie desJardins, https://www.csee.umbc.edu/~mariedj/papers/advice.pdf.
• "The 5 Virtues of Successful Graduate Students," Thomas H. Benton, https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-5-Virtues-of-Successful/5060.
• Blog post on "Toxic Academic Mentors" from the blog "Tenure, She Wrote": https://tenureshewrote.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/toxic-academic-mentors/.

Additional Reading:

• The Ph.D Experience, Mihir Bellare CS Prof at UCSD https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~mihir/phd.html.
• Matt Might, CS Prof at Utah has lots of excellent advice for graduate students. Look under "Graduate School" in this index of article: http://matt.might.net/articles/. Some example articles that seem most relevant are: "12 resolutions for grad students," "The 5+5 Commandments of a Ph.D," "10 easy ways to fail a Ph.D."
• The University of Iowa Mentoring Resources for Faculty and Staff: https://uiowa.edu/icru/article/mentoring-resources-facultystaff.
• "Reflections on Advising Graduate Students," David H. Monk https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2015/03/20/steps-help-professors-better-advise-graduate-students-essay

Week 5: 2/12-2/16 Algorithmic Bias and Algorithmic Fairness: Part I
Main Reading:

• Big Data is Unfair: Understanding Sources of Unfairness in Data Driven Decisions, Moritz Hardt, Google.
• Algorithms and Bias: Q. and A. With Cynthia Dwork, NYT Claire Cain Miller, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/11/upshot/algorithms-and-bias-q-and-a-with-cynthia-dwork.html.
• When Algorithms Discriminate, NYT Claire Cain Miller, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/10/upshot/when-algorithms-discriminate.html.

Additional Reading: Lots of additional reading at the FAT* 2018 conference program: https://fatconference.org/.

Week 6: 2/19-2/23 Algorithmic Bias and Algorithmic Fairness: Part II
Main Reading:

• Runaway Feedback Loops in Predictive Policing, Danielle Ensign (University of Utah), Sorelle A. Friedler (Haverford College), Scott Neville (University of Utah), Carlos Scheidegger (University of Arizona), Suresh Venkatasubramanian (University of Utah), Proceedings of Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, 81:1–12, 2018.

Week 7: 2/26-3/2 Ethics of Creating and Deploying Software
Main Reading:

• http://www.infoworld.com/article/2607452/application-development/12-ethical-dilemmas-gnawing-at-developers-today.html "12 ethical dilemmas gnawing at developers today," Peter Wayner, InfoWorld, April 2014.
• https://www.scu.edu/media/ethics-center/technology-ethics/Students.pdf, An Introduction to Software Engineering Ethics, Shannon Vallor and Arvind Narayanan. This is a rather long paper; we will cover the first three "parts" of the paper.

• High-Pressure Steam Engines and Computer Software, Nancy G. Leveson, keynote talk at the International Conference on Software Engineering, 1992. This is a "classic" in this field.
• ACM Code of Software Engineering Ethics.

Week 8: 3/19-3/23 Research Misconduct and Issues in Data Management such as Anonymity and Privacy
Main Reading:

• Only You, Your Doctor, and Many Others May Know. Sweeney L. Technology Science. September 29, 2015.
• On the anonymity of the Facebook dataset. from Micahel Zimmer's blog (Sep 30, 2008).

Week 9: 3/26-3/30 The ethics of using animals in research
Main Reading:

• Some Thoughts on Animal Experimentation, David S. Favre, 2 Animal L. 161 (1996).
• Of Mice and Ethics, C.T. Streba, C.C. Vere, Cristina Miscu, D.I. Gheonea, Larisa Sandulescu, T. Ciurea, I. Rogoveanu, A. Saftoiu, Current Health Sciences Journal, Vol. 38, No. 1, 2012 January March.
• Animal ethics in Cardiovascular Research, Marisol Ruiz-Meana, Elizabeth A. Martinson, David Garcia-Dorado, and Hans Michael Piper. Cardiovascular Research (2012) 93, 1–3
• Open Science and Reporting Animal Studies: Who’s Accountable?, Jonathan A. Eisen, Emma Ganley, Catriona J. MacCallum, PLOS Biology, Jan 2014 12(1).

• Control use of data to protect privacy Susan Landau, Science Jan 2015: Vol. 347, Issue 6221, pp. 504-506.
• Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, And Won’t Tell Me How Kashmir Hill, Gizmodo, 2017.
• Artificial Intelligence Pushes the Anti-Trust Envelope by Michaela Ross, Bloomberg BNA, 2017.

• Moral Crumple Zones: Cautionary Tales in Human-Robot Interaction M.C. Elish, We Robot 2016 Working Paper.
• When your self-driving car crashes, you could still be the one who gets sued M.C.Elish and Tim Hwang, Quartz, July 2015.
• Machine Learning and the Law: Five Theses T. Burri, ML and the Law, NIPS Symposium, 2016.

• This is not really a reading. Listen to the April 12th show of "On Point" from WBUR in Boston at: Facebook Faces Congress. The show is 48 mins long.
• There are a few readings linked to from above-mentioned "On Point" show page. Of these, I would like you to read Congress Is Unearthing Facebook’s Terrible Power from Wired Magazine, April 11th.

• Ban Targeted Advertising, David Dayen, April 10 2018.
• In addition, Prof. Shafiq would like you to use the following links to download your data from Google and Facebook prior to coming to class. The goal of this exercise is to raise awareness about the data hoarded by big advertisers like Google and Facebook.
  Google: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout
  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/help/131112897028467

• Ethics in Security Research: Which Lines Should Not Be Crossed? Sebastian Schrittwieser, Martin Mulazzani, and Edgar Weippl. Slides that go with this paper.
• Ethics in Security Vulnerability Research, Andrea M. Matwyshyn, Ang Cui, Angelos D. Keromytis, and Salvatore J. Stolfo. IEEE Security and Privacy, April 2010.
• Face-Off: Is vulnerability research ethical?, Bruce Schneier and Marcus Ranum debate the ethics of vulnerability research.